Observations, Rants, and Examination, of things political, philosophical, historical and tragicomical. Likely to be yet another collection of barnacles on the hull of blogshpere.

Sunday, January 9

Bring out your Death Squads.

Since everything else we have tried has failed miserably in Iraq, lets take a trip in the wayback machine and pull a dirty little play out of the Reagan era foreign policy playbook. And it gets better, our present ambassador to Iraq John Negroponte, was instumental in the formation and the support of the Salvadoran Death Squads.

So it looks like the only way to save our Iraqi bacon is to engage in torture, kidnapping and assasination. Welcome to the Banana Republic formarlly known as the United States. Thanks to Attaturk for the tip.

Jan. 8 - What to do about the deepening quagmire of Iraq? The Pentagon’s latest approach is being called "the Salvador option"—and the fact that it is being discussed at all is a measure of just how worried Donald Rumsfeld really is. "What everyone agrees is that we can’t just go on as we are," one senior military officer told NEWSWEEK. "We have to find a way to take the offensive against the insurgents. Right now, we are playing defense. And we are losing." Last November’s operation in Fallujah, most analysts agree, succeeded less in breaking "the back" of the insurgency—as Marine Gen. John Sattler optimistically declared at the time—than in spreading it out.

Really, and I thought that FallujahPallooza WarPorn III was a resounding success, and that we had paved the roads of that city with the splintered spines of the insurgency. seem to remember in the fog of time an Army Chief of staff suggesting that it might take a couple of more troops to keep the peace in Iraq after the destruction of Saddam's Army. Shinseki I think the name was, and for his prescience, he was fired.

Now, NEWSWEEK has learned, the Pentagon is intensively debating an option that dates back to a still-secret strategy in the Reagan administration’s battle against the leftist guerrilla insurgency in El Salvador in the early 1980s. Then, faced with a losing war against Salvadoran rebels, the U.S. government funded or supported "nationalist" forces that allegedly included so-called death squads directed to hunt down and kill rebel leaders and sympathizers. Eventually the insurgency was quelled, many U.S. conservatives consider the policy to have been a success—despite the deaths of innocent civilians and the subsequent Iran-Contra arms-for-hostages scandal.and (Among the current administration officials who dealt with Central America back then is John Negroponte, who is today the U.S. ambassador to Iraq. Under Reagan, he was ambassador to Honduras.)

Conservatives are fond of the saying that you have to break a few eggs to make an omelette, in other words the ends justify any means, and morality for all the crowing they do on the subject is Relative. As long as we stuff them in a box like Schroedingers cat, we will mever be certain whether they are dead or not.

Following that model, one Pentagon proposal would send Special Forces teams to advise, support and possibly train Iraqi squads, most likely hand-picked Kurdish Peshmerga fighters and Shiite militiamen, to target Sunni insurgents and their sympathizers, even across the border into Syria, according to military insiders familiar with the discussions. It remains unclear, however, whether this would be a policy of assassination or so-called "snatch" operations, in which the targets are sent to secret facilities for interrogation. The current thinking is that while U.S. Special Forces would lead operations in, say, Syria, activities inside Iraq itself would be carried out by Iraqi paramilitaries, officials tell NEWSWEEK.

The use of Peshmeraga, forays into Syria, are you kidding me? Thats fantastic, if you are looking for the recipe of a civil war or an Imperial Army breaking, region wide conflagration. Has anybody considered increasing our troop strength? Silly me, that would require a draft and the sacrifice of a bit of the Asterix President's political capital, and non of that can happen untill he has finished prying open the Social Security Trust fund. But if he can accomplish that, expect the draft to follow apace.

Pentagon civilians and some Special Forces personnel believe CIA civilian managers have traditionally been too conservative in planning and executing the kind of undercover missions that Special Forces soldiers believe they can effectively conduct. CIA traditionalists are believed to be adamantly opposed to ceding any authority to the Pentagon.

In place of pentagon civilians should read Neo-Con hacks, whose soothsaying and conjuring powers have been shown grossly defficient. And whats the prosecution of a little land war in Asia without a little turf war between the agencies charged with its prosecution. I wonder what the old CIA hack Allawi, now presnit of Iraqistan thinks about these "ideas".

The interim government of Prime Minister Ayad Allawi is said to be among the most forthright proponents of the Salvador option. Maj. Gen.Muhammad Abdallah al-Shahwani, director of Iraq’s National Intelligence Service, may have been laying the groundwork for the idea with a series of interviews during the past ten days. Shahwani told the London-based Arabic daily Al-Sharq al-Awsat that the insurgent leadership—he named three former senior figures in the Saddam regime, including Saddam Hussein’s half-brother—were essentially safe across the border in a Syrian sanctuary. "We are certain that they are in Syria and move easily between Syrian and Iraqi territories," he said, adding that efforts to extradite them "have not borne fruit so far."

Lots of declarative statements made on the shifting sands of certainties, not much fruit borne. Yes that stream of insurgents that seek safe harbour in Syria are destabilizing the entire region, but do not worry yer pretty little heads, our Special Forces will sort that mess out, and future slant well drilling operations into the oil fields of Saudia Arabia will pay for it all, Just like operation Iraqi Freedom is paying for itself.

Pentagon sources emphasize there has been no decision yet to launch the Salvador option. Last week, Rumsfeld decided to send a retired four-star general, Gary Luck, to Iraq on an open-ended mission to review the entire military strategy there. But with the U.S. Army strained to the breaking point, military strategists note that a dramatic new approach might be needed—perhaps one as potentially explosive as the Salvador option.

Praise god and pass the handgrenades, its only a thought bubble at this time....

The Bill of Rights

Amendment I

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion,
or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom
of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably
to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

Amendment II

A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State,
the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.

Amendment III

No Soldier shall, in time of peace be quartered in any house,
without the consent of the Owner, nor in time of war,
but in a manner to be prescribed by law.

Amendment IV

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses,
papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures,
shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon
probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly
describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

Amendment V

No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime,
unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury, except in cases
arising in the land or naval forces, or in the Militia, when in actual
service in time of War or public danger; nor shall any person be subject
for the same offence to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb;
nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself,
nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law;
nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.

Amendment VI

In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy
and public trial, by an impartial jury of the State and district wherein
the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously
ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation;
to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for
obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the Assistance of Counsel for his defence.

Amendment VII

In Suits at common law, where the value in controversy shall exceed twenty dollars,
the right of trial by jury shall be preserved, and no fact tried by a jury, shall
be otherwise re-examined in any Court of the United States,
than according to the rules of the common law.

The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not
be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.

Amendment X

The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution,
nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the
States respectively, or to the people.

Gettysburg Address

Fourscore and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation,
conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation or any nation so conceived
and so dedicated can long endure. We are met on a great battlefield of that war. We have come to
dedicate a portion of it as a final resting place for those who died here that that nation might
live. This we may, in all propriety do. But in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate, we cannot
consecrate, we cannot hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead who struggled here have
hallowed it far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note nor long remember
what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here.

It is rather for us the living,
we here be dedicated to the great task remaining before us--that from these honored dead we take
increased devotion to that cause for which they here gave the last full measure of devotion--that
we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain, that this nation shall have a
new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, for the people shall not
perish from the earth."